


What One Has

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Fables - Willingham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-16
Updated: 2006-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:25:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snow White and Rose Red were raised to share, but the story is always changing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What One Has

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Victoria P. for beta.
> 
> Written for havocthecat

 

 

It figured, Rose Red had always thought, that Prince Charming had fallen in love with Snow White while she was asleep.

For a long time, she bit her tongue as punishment for that thought, but after a while, she stopped (by then, the prince was biting it for her).

That first day Snow came home, there was no room for anything but joy. Rose had felt--diminished, maybe?--without her sister, which surely wasn't right. Snow was the one who diminished her, always bossing, always doing Rose's chores in addition to her own and then scolding Rose mercilessly, always being _right_ , always being the most beautiful girl anyone had ever seen.

It had all started, of course, with the bear. The bear, Rose had thought, loved both of them just the same. They both played and wrestled with him and buried themselves in his warm fur until it was quite like lying on a bearskin rug, one nestled into the other, both cradled by the gentle bear.

But then the enchantment had to break (a bad business, Rose thought--he'd been far nicer as a bear), and then the bear-prince, whose name was Bruno, wanted to marry Snow. Nothing in Rose's life had prepared her for that. Their mother had always said, "What one has, she must share with the other," and they always had. But then Bruno wanted to marry Snow and Snow alone. Mother took her aside and explained that the sharing of husbands was called bigamy, and was generally frowned on, so Rose tried to be resigned. She married Bruno's brother, and she supposed that was as near to sharing as they were likely to be allowed. They all slept in the same enormous bed, and though there were two large, hairy men in it with them, it was still Snow and Rose, like the bushes growing outside the cottage, the same as ever.

They got tired of their husbands soon enough (Rose secretly thought that Bruno had gotten tired of Snow even quicker, but that served him right for picking her anyway) and went back to their mother's cottage, and back there, everything was the same, at least until the whole mess with the queen and the dwarves (whom Snow should have known to stay away from, given what they'd both seen of dwarves and their manners). But the whole thing nagged at her. Snow was the fairest of them all? They were supposed to be the same--two buds on the same branch, as it were. But apparently they weren't. Apparently Snow was the fairest of them all, and Rose ranked somewhere _below_ a wicked queen who'd tried to kill her sister.

Snow was supposedly dead during that time, and Rose hated her fiercely for it: for being dead, for being so much nicer in Rose's sentimental thoughts than she had been in real life, and for leaving her alone with a mother who did nothing but weep and pray for her lost daughter.

But then, one spring morning, while Rose was out sweeping the path and peering to see if the snowdrops had bloomed yet, Snow came back. She fairly danced up to the cottage once she climbed off the palfrey, and threw her arms around Rose, and for that moment, Rose could see the radiance that made Snow the fairest of them all. For that moment, Rose didn't hate her for it.

"Aren't you supposed to be dead?" Rose whispered against her sister's hair. It was a stupid thing to say, but Rose was young then, and still a little afraid of ghosts. Snow didn't smell like a ghost, though. She smelled like roses and dirt and something else that Rose couldn't quite place.

"The huntsman spared me. I stayed with some dwarves, but the queen found me and almost-killed me. He woke me up, though," Snow said, gesturing over her shoulder with a laugh.

That was when Rose saw him, up on his charger. She'd not noticed him before, with Snow absorbing all her attention, but he was worth looking at. Handsome, more refined than Bruno had been, and his eyes full of adoration, all for Snow.

Then Rose realized what Snow smelled like. She smelled like sex.

Rose tried to be brave, tried to laugh it off. "What's his brother like?" she demanded. It would be more or less the same as before. And in the end, they would get tired of their husbands, and move back to the cottage, and they would be the same again. Snow might pull away from her for a little while, but not forever. Never forever.

Snow bit her lip and wouldn't quite look into Rose's eyes. "He doesn't have a brother," she whispered, then said, hurriedly, "But you know you didn't like the last one anyway, so it's better, isn't it? And he's lovely, Rose, so lovely, you'll love him before you know it, and live with us..."

Rose ran, then. Straight past Prince Charming's charger, into the woods, losing herself in all the old haunts where they'd picked berries and helped the dwarf and spent weeks and months just together, alone. She wouldn't go back. She couldn't. It wasn't right anymore--something had changed, somehow. The story had changed. It had been their story, but now it wasn't. Now it was Snow's story, and she was just an unwelcome addition.

She threw herself onto the bed of moss where they had slept together as children, and cried and shivered all night long, even as she slept.

When she woke up in the morning, Snow was there, and so was _he_. Snow was down beside her, wrapping her cloak around Rose, and holding her close to try and warm the pale, cold flesh.

"He helped me find you," Snow whispered softly. "Rose, he says you should come and live with us too. We'll be a family again, and everything will be perfect."

Rose knew that wasn't quite true. There wouldn't be one big bed with two hairy brothers and two beautiful sisters. There would be one big bed for Prince Charming and Snow White, and one small one for Rose Red, diminished yet again. But there was nothing else she could do, and she looked up at the prince tentatively.

"Of course, I'll always be glad to have my wife's sister nearby, to ensure her happiness, and, in time I'm sure, my own," he said smoothly. It all sounded very well, but then...then he _winked_ so that Snow couldn't see it, bent as she still was and chafing Rose's hands.

And Rose, who'd always been bold and had laughed at her first husband, Rose lowered her lashes demurely, just as Snow always did, and smiled.

It wasn't their story anymore. It was Snow's story. But Rose would find her way into it, by hook or crook. It was her nature, and that much, at least, hadn't changed.

 


End file.
